Disappearing Nine Patch (A Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery Book 9)

by Arlene Sachitano

  “Since I haven’t done anything, I can finish DeAnn’s blocks and sew it all together if you want. I can help bind, too.”

  “Thanks, that will help a lot,” Robin said. “I picked up some extra yoga classes this week so one of my fellow teachers can go on a well-deserved vacation.”

  “No problem,” Jenny said and smiled. “And while I’m catching up on things…” She wiggled her eyebrows up and down and looked at Harriet. “Is James, whose mother you quoted earlier, the hottie chef with the restaurant on the cove?”

  Lauren sighed.

  “One does need a scorecard to keep up with Harriet’s love life.”

  Harriet blushed.

  “I’ve been helping James with his racing wiener dog. I’m just subbing for his sister. Of course, it’s given us a chance to get to know each other better.”

  “Yeah, like he’s taken you home to meet the parents already,” Lauren said.

  “It was only his mother, and he knew I wanted to know what her friend Lois knew about Amber’s disappearance. Lois lived on Amber’s street back then.”

  Jenny smiled.

  “It must be hard spending time with a good-looking guy who can cook.”

  Harriet sighed.

  “He’d be the first one to tell you he doesn’t have time for a relationship. He’s married to the restaurant.”

  Everyone but Carla groaned and then smiled.

  “That is such a line,” Lauren finally said. “He’s trying to get you to lower your guard so he can move in. He knows you’re on the rebound from Aiden. Tom isn’t as much of a threat as long as he’s got geography problems. I don’t see that changing as long as he’s running his mother’s art school and retreat center and still working his day job.”

  “You seem to know a lot about what’s happening with Tom,” Harriet countered.

  “Ahh, you forget, my sibling works there,” Lauren said smugly.

  “No matter what you think, neither James nor I are looking for a relationship right now.”

  “The best relationships start that way,” Connie whispered loudly to Mavis.

  “I heard that,” Harriet told them.

  “Okay,” Robin said. “I need to get going. Who’s going to do what?”

  Lauren took out her tablet and woke it up.

  “I said I’d see what I can find out about any possible work problems Molly might have had.” She tapped a note onto her calendar, reminding herself what she’d agreed to.

  Connie gathered her empty cup and put her crumpled napkin into it.

  “Mavis and I are scheduled to deliver food to the homeless camp tomorrow from the church pantry. We can talk to Joyce Elias and see what she knows about Max’s whereabouts on the night in question.”

  Robin jotted down the assignments and then wrote her own name.

  “I’ll dig in the court records and see what I can find out about Gary Alexander. Anyone else?”

  Carla coughed and cleared her throat.

  “I could talk to the psychic.”

  “Oh, honey,” Connie said. “That could be dangerous.”

  “When I was young, my mom dated a carny. We traveled with the carnival for a whole year. Madam Geni taught me some things about how to fake people out. She read fortunes, but it’s the same idea.”

  Carla had probably been in more dangerous situations than the whole group together, Harriet thought.

  “Look up the psychic on the Internet first. If he or she has a website or advertises their services, it should be okay,” Harriet said and looked at Connie and Mavis for approval.

  “I can agree to that,” Mavis said.

  “Since I’ve never seen the poet, I can go to the bookstore and ask after him. I will also go to his real job.” Jenny looked at Harriet. “Didn’t you say he worked at that convenience store out on the highway?”

  “That’s right. And while you all are doing your assignments, I’ll see if I can track down Josh Phillips. I’d like to know if we can establish whether he was still in town last night. Molly’s workplace may know, plus I can check at the motel.”

  Foggy Point only had one motel, so she didn’t need to say anything more about it.

  “I’m going to go by the police station and find out if Morse or anyone else will tell me if they were able to check Juana’s tracker and see if she was near my aunt’s car. If Morse is in, I’ll ask if she knows anything she can share about Molly.”

  “Good idea,” Lauren said.

  Robin wrote the final assignments on her pad and stuffed it back into her purse with her pen.

  “Shall we meet again on Thursday?” she asked.

  “How about we meet at Jorge’s for lunch on Thursday,” Mavis suggested. She turned to Harriet. “You can bring the first quilt for us to start binding at the same time.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’m going to swing by the PD on my way home, and then I need to get stitching. See you all Thursday.”

  Chapter 14

  Detective Morse looked tired when she came to meet Harriet at the front counter of the Foggy Point Police Department. Her normally close-cropped hair was over her ears and showing signs of a long-overdue trip to the hairdresser, and the dark patches under her eyes were more pronounced.

  “Let’s put a visitor’s tag on you, and we can go back to my desk.”

  Harriet wrote her name in the logbook and was given a stick-on badge by the desk sergeant. Morse buzzed the door open, and Harriet followed her through a warren of cubicles to the cold case squad section.

  “Are you doing okay?” she asked.

  Detective Morse rubbed her hand over her face and sighed.

  “I’m fine. I’ve got some family drama going on. My mother can’t live on her own anymore, and it’s a battle royal among my siblings as to what we do next. Nothing that can’t be solved—I’m just spending a lot of time on late-night phone calls from the warring factions.”

  Harriet’s mouth tilted up on one side in a half-smile.

  “I guess there are some benefits to being an only child.”

  Morse laughed.

  “My sibs are a handful, but I’m glad I don’t have to deal with my mother alone. Now, I’m sure you didn’t come here to talk about my personal problems.”

  “I was hoping to find out if they’ve been able to track Juana’s movements. And…” She watched for a reaction. “…I was hoping you could tell me something about what’s going on about Molly Baker.”

  “Your pipeline will already have told you as much as I can. She’s dead from a blow to the head, and one of the homeless camp residents found her. That’s about as much as we know right now. Since she’s connected to my cold case, I’m in on the investigation, so believe me when I tell you—we don’t know anything yet. If you have any information for us, I’d like to hear it.”

  Harriet leaned back in her chair.

  “You probably know I called Molly’s phone, and it was answered by a detective. That was how I found out something was wrong.”

  Morse poured a paper cup full of water from a pitcher that sat on the tan file cabinet next to her desk. Harriet took it and sipped before continuing.

  “I had three voice messages on my cell phone while I was at the hospital with my aunt.”

  Morse leaned forward but didn’t say anything.

  “The first two just said to call her.”

  “Did you save them?” Morse interrupted.

  “No, I didn’t know they would matter. Anyway, the third one said she’d spoken with a psychic and knew how to find Amber. And no, I didn’t save that one, either. Molly had been pretty persistent in her demands for help finding out what had happened to Amber. I thought it was just one more of her crazy ideas.”

  “She said ‘how’ to find Amber? Not ‘where’ to find her?”

  “We noticed that, too. It was definitely ‘how.’ It struck us all as odd.”

  “Anything else?”

  “She said she ‘remembered’, whatever that means. Mostly my relationship
with Molly was her asking me to help her find Amber and me saying if the police couldn’t find her, I didn’t know what she expected me to do.”

  “Did you do anything?”

  “Only talk to Leo Tabor and his wife. Mavis and my aunt thought he might know something because he had taken Amber to the police when she was wandering the neighborhood.”

  “And because he was the number-one suspect back then?”

  “Not really. Avanell Jalbert had told them he wasn’t a molester or anything else. He had worked for her. They really thought he might know something. He was really nice, but all he knew was that Amber wandered the neighborhood unattended.”

  “You will let me know if you hear anything else, won’t you?”

  “You’ll be the first to know.”

  Harriet felt only a little guilty that she hadn’t mentioned the Loose Threads’ plan to gather information. She was also sure Morse wasn’t telling her everything the police knew.

  “Let’s go see if we can find out where Juana’s been.”

  Morse led the way through the maze until they reached a police technician sitting in front of a computer screen.

  “Have you been able to get the data from the GPS tracker on Juana Lopez-Montoya?”

  The technician clicked a few keys and opened a new screen that showed a map on the top half and a list below it. He pointed to the map.

  “This shows you where she went, and the list below tells you all the locations where she stopped for more than ninety seconds, and how long she was in those locations.”

  He clicked the keyboard again, and a new map was superimposed over Juana’s trail.

  “This is the map of where you said your aunt’s car was.” He pointed to first one then a second place on the map. “She was at or near the grocery store when you were there. And she was within a block of you when you went to the quilt store, but she was only there for four minutes, and it looks like she stayed at the corner. Was your car parked close to the intersection?”

  Harriet shook her head.

  “No, I was in the middle of the block.”

  The tech turned away from his computer and looked at Detective Morse.

  “Someone needs to request the security footage from the grocery store. I can check it out if you get it.”

  “I’ll tell the officers who are investigating the accident what you found. Thanks for rushing it.”

  The tech smiled.

  “We aim to please.”

  He turned around and was clicking back to the screen he’d been working on when they interrupted him before they left his cubicle.

  They started back toward the front desk. Morse stopped and turned to Harriet.

  “I’ll be surprised if Juana was able to work on your aunt’s car in the grocery store parking lot without anyone interrupting her. This is a small town, and a lot of people know Juana. If she was messing with a car in broad daylight, I’d like to think someone would have come over to see what she was doing.”

  “If she didn’t do it, then who did?”

  Morse sighed.

  Harriet clicked her phone on to display the time and did a quick calculation. If she didn’t linger long, she could swing by Aunt Beth’s and see how she was doing. It might make her aunt feel better to know it probably wasn’t Juana who’d tampered with her car.

  She stopped at the florists and picked up an arrangement of lilies and roses and then drove out to the cottage on the strait.

  “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be in bed?” she asked when she’d let herself in.

  Aunt Beth was propped in her recliner with a pillow under her feet. She clicked her television off with the remote.

  “They just said I had to rest.”

  Harriet set the vase of flowers on the coffee table.

  “I’m pretty sure when they said only get up to go to the bathroom they were thinking you’d be in bed the rest of the time.”

  “I’m fine here. If you must know, the doctor called this morning after Connie and Mavis left. He said the radiologist looked at my x-rays and decided I chipped my ankle bone. They don’t do anything different for that, but it did give me the chance to ask if sitting in my recliner was okay; and he said if I put a pillow under my foot to help with the elevation, it was fine.” She pressed her lips together and gave Harriet a smug look.

  “Okay, fine, excuse me for trying to take care of you.”

  Aunt Beth’s face softened.

  “Oh, honey, I know you mean well, but you know how I hate daytime television. I’d go crazy laying in that hide-a-bed worrying about what sort of trouble you were getting yourself into.

  “Can you sit a minute and tell me what happened at your meeting. And don’t try to tell me you gals just talked about the quilts.”

  Harriet opened her mouth to speak, but the doorbell rang before she could get any words out.

  “Are you expecting anyone?” she asked as she got up to answer the door.

  “No one called ahead.”

  She opened the door and found DeAnn on the porch, a vase of purple and yellow wildflowers in hand.

  “Is this a good time to visit? If it isn’t, I can just drop these and go.” She pulled a card from the side pocket of her purse.

  Harriet swung the door wide to let her in.

  “I think my aunt is up for a short visit.” She took the flowers and set them on the bookcase. “Would you like tea or anything?”

  DeAnn set her purse down and perched on the corner of the sofa closest to Beth.

  “How are you doing? Robin told me your car was tampered with?”

  “It’s nothing serious. I’m a little banged and bruised, but I’ll be fine in a few days. Enough about me. I’m so sorry to hear about your sister. How are you holding up?”

  DeAnn’s shoulders sagged, and she looked first at Harriet and then Beth.

  “This is going to sound terrible, and I am sad about my sister, but right now, what I feel most is relief. Am I a terrible person?” Her eyes swept from Harriet to Beth again, and a tear dribbled from her left eye.

  Beth plucked a couple of tissues from the box on her side table and handed them to Harriet to pass to DeAnn.

  “Honey, you are not a terrible person. Tell me what’s going on.”

  DeAnn dabbed at her eyes with the tissue.

  “I’m terrible to even say this, but Molly’s obsession with finding out what happened to Amber and her was really disruptive. I know I should feel sorry for her, and I do…did…but her search dominated our family in more ways than one.

  “My parents drained their savings account paying for her to go on one wild goose chase after another, to say nothing of the years of therapy they paid for. They put up the money for her to start her nonprofit, and I know it’s a good cause. Who can argue with helping the families of missing and exploited children? But they can’t retire now because they gave more than they really had.

  “And then there were the ‘crisis’ calls. It didn’t matter if it was their grandchild’s birthday party, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or any other holiday—if Molly called with a hot lead, or called because she’d followed a false lead one more time, they ran to her side, wherever she was, ruining whatever we had planned.”

  She dabbed her eyes again.

  “I know I sound selfish, but how many times do you have to be taken advantage of by people trying to get your reward money for tips before you figure it out. There are no witnesses waiting to come forward. No one wants her to solve this. And now she’s found out in a horrible way that whoever killed Amber and knocked her out doesn’t want anyone to know what really happened.”

  She dropped her hands into her lap.

  “Why couldn’t she just be happy she’d survived?”

  Harriet and Beth looked away while DeAnn sobbed. She wiped her eyes again and straightened her shoulders. She looked up at Beth.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come over and dump on you two. I really did want to know how you were doing and say I hope y
ou feel better.”

  “Honey, you come by anytime. You’re in a real difficult situation, and I’m sure you’re going to feel a lot of things when you think about your sister. It’s okay, however you feel. And I’m sure there is a sense of relief when you consider your parents’ situation. No matter how much you loved Molly and how hurt she was by what had happened to her, she wasn’t seeing how she was causing problems for your parents. I’d be willing to bet you and your David have been thinking about how you were going to be able to support your parents when they can’t work anymore. Now maybe they can save a little for the future.”

  DeAnn’s face relaxed and her lips twitched into a half-smile.

  “Thank you. Now, I really do need to go.”

  “You come back anytime, honey. And bring those cute kids by. Those boys are going to be in college before I see them again.”

  DeAnn laughed.

  “It’s not that bad. They’re not out of grade school yet. I’ll be sure and bring them by when all this…” She gestured to indicate everything that was going on. “…stuff, is over.”

  “You do that, and thank you for the beautiful flowers and card.”

  DeAnn picked up her purse and left.

  Chapter 15

  Aunt Beth picked up an appliqué flower block from the table beside her chair and began stitching the edge of a leaf with neat invisible stitches.

  “So, tell me, what did you all figure out at the meeting this morning?”

  Harriet recited the high points of the discussion.

  “I’ve already done my first task, which was checking in with Detective Morse about Juana. I have to see if Josh Phillips was still in town. Carla is checking on the psychic Molly went to, Lauren is going to research Molly’s work background to see if there’s anyone else who had a grudge against her. Robin is checking court records to see what Gary Alexander is up to.” She explained about James’s mother and her neighbor. “On a happier note, Jenny came to coffee, and she looked really good.”

  “That’s good,” Aunt Beth interrupted.

  “Yes, it is. Anyway, she’s going to the bookstore and that convenience store out by the highway to see if we can figure out where Molly’s new boyfriend was during the critical time. And I don’t know if you’ve talked to Connie or Mavis yet, but they’re going out to the homeless camp to see what Joyce and her crew know.”